Russell smiled.
Buck said, "Guy's bluffing, Russell."
"Don't take my word for it," I said. "Ask Geoffrey."
"How's the satellite working, Geoff?" said Russell.
Latimer hesitated a few seconds. "Something's wrong with it. I couldn't get connected. He must have done something."
"Should have brought your A team on this job," I said. "Sloppy. You see, Russell, I worked as a cable installer once for a couple of months. Not one of my favorite jobs, but I guess you never know when a skill might come in handy."
I waited a beat, but Russell didn't reply. "Call me crazy, but I've got a feeling you're not really an expert in splicing RG-6 coaxial cable."
Silence.
"How about you, Buck?" I said. "Or you, Travis?"
Silence.
"Didn't think so. The handyman sure isn't. Ask him. Guy can probably do anything with a boat or a generator or a busted dishwasher, but when the satellite goes down, I'll bet you the manager gets on the sat phone and calls the satellite company. You planning on calling the cable company, Russell? Ask for a service call, maybe? Wait a couple days for them to get all the way out here?"
"We don't need him for that, Russell," Latimer said. "Even if he's telling the truth, we don't need him to fix the line. I'm sure the handyman can figure it out. The main thing is, there's only one person who knows about all this. You have to take him out right now."
Russell glanced at Latimer. Smiled again. "You know, Geoff," he said, "I think you're right." In one swift, smooth movement, he removed the Glock from Ali's head. I swung the Ruger around to aim at the center of his chest, gripping it with both hands, and in the instant before I could pull the trigger to take him down, an explosion rang in my ears.
Latimer slumped to the floor. Ali screamed, jumped, but Russell's arm held her tight against his body.
I stared, at once relieved and horrified.
"Now, Jake," Russell said calmly as he replaced the gun against Ali's temple, "my brother's going to escort you outside and watch while you repair the line. I know you care whether your girlfriend lives or dies, so I'm sure you won't try anything stupid."
"I'll take him outside," Buck said.
"Thank you, Buck," Russell said, "but I don't think that'll be necessary. Jake's going to return your gun to you. He'll be unarmed. Jake, place the Ruger on the floor. Slowly."
I paused. Breathed out slowly.
Russell jammed the Glock into Ali's temple, and she gave a cry.
"All right," I said. "But here's the deaclass="underline" As soon as I fix the cable, you let her go. I'll signal you when I'm finished, and you can check. Confirm the Internet connection's working. If I keep my end of the bargain, you keep your end. Okay?"
Russell nodded, smiled. "You don't give up, do you?"
"Never," I said.
75
Travis kept his distance, his weapon trained on me.
I knelt at the side of the shed where I'd cut the cable, and held up one end for him to see. A glint of copper in the moonlight.
"Can I have a little light here?" I said.
With his left hand, he took out his flashlight and switched it on, blinding me.
"Out of my eyes, please."
He shifted the beam toward the ground, shined it on the loops of cable coming out of the earth against the shed's concrete foundation, then at the severed ends.
I said, "You do this, Travis?"
"What?"
"One of you guys must have cut this."
Travis sounded surprised to be asked, even irate. "No."
"I'm going to need some stuff. A crimping tool, a couple of F-type male connectors, and an F-81 connector. And a cable cutter and a pair of pliers. A toggle strip tool, if they have one."
Travis shuffled a foot on the gravelly sand. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"If they have it, it's going to be in the toolshed. If they don't, I'm going to have to wing it. We need to find out, fast."
"How the hell do I know what they have?"
"You don't. I'll have to look."
He shined the flashlight into my eyes again. I shielded my eyes with a hand.
"I'm going to have to ask Russell."
"You check with your brother every time you wipe your ass? If they have anything, it'll be right here, in the shed." I touched the shingled wall. "Let's take a look. You guys don't have time to screw around."
He hesitated. "All right."
The diesel engine inside was chugging away. Didn't he wonder why the tool shed had a generator inside? But he didn't seem to know one outbuilding from another, and he probably wasn't thinking too clearly. He was intent only on keeping me from going anywhere or doing anything.
Instead of coming around to the front to the shed door, I rounded toward the back.
"Hey! Door's over here."
"Yeah, and the key's hanging on a hook back here," I said, and kept going. I muttered, "Or do you want to call for Big Brother and ask him for permission to get it?"
He followed, still trying to keep a distance, his gun on me, the beam in my eyes.
"Will you point that flashlight over here, please?" I said, not indicating anything. "And not at my eyes?"
"Where?"
"Shit," I said, stopping by a gnarled old pine whose branches raked the shed's low roof. "It's not here. You see it anywhere?"
The cone of light swept up and down the shingles: quick, jerky movements, impatient.
"Shit," I said. "We're going to have to get the handyman out here to open up the shed."
He moved the flashlight beam from the ground up to the shed's low roof, then down again. I could see him hesitate, trying to figure out how to get out his two-way while keeping the gun on me and putting the flashlight away. As he did so, I stepped closer to him, pretending to search for the missing key. He clicked off the flashlight, jammed it in a vest pocket, and felt for his HT.
"Wait," I said. "I think I found it. Sorry about that."
Wayne's SIG-Sauer, nestled in a crook of the old pine's tree trunk. I grabbed it, swung it around, and put it against his ear.
"One word," I said, "and I'll blow your brains out."
He hesitated just long enough for me to grab his gun hand at the wrist and twist it, hard. He was amazingly strong: all that prison muscle. But finally I was able to wrench it out of his hand.
His left fist crashed into my cheek. He didn't have room to maneuver, to aim his punch or get a decent arc, but still the blow was incredibly powerful. A jagged lightning bolt of pain exploded in my eyes, my brain. I tasted blood.
But that didn't stop me from thrusting my knee into his groin. He expelled a lungful of air through my fingers. The whites of his eyes flickered briefly, and he grunted, looked sick.
I shoved the gun into his ear, but before I could say anything, his fist smashed into my temple, so hard that pinpoints of light danced before my eyes.
Don't give in to it.
I kneed his groin again, slammed his head into the tree trunk, then swung the pistol against the side of his head with all of my strength.
He went right down.
Slumped against the tree and slid to the ground. His eyes were open just enough to see the whites.
But he was out.
76
I tied him up with some of the rope I'd cut off Ali, then popped out the magazine of his Colt Defender, checked to make sure it was loaded. It was. The SIG was down at least three shots, so I jammed it into my back pocket as a backup. Then I headed to the other shed.
My father had what he called a "toy box" of war trophies and deactivated training grenades he'd brought home from Vietnam. When I was maybe six he explained to me what an incendiary grenade was. A little later that afternoon, as I ran circles around him trying to get him to play hide-and-seek, he hurled one at me.
To teach me a lesson.
Only after I stopped crying did he explain, with a hearty guffaw, that you had to pull the pin first or it wouldn't detonate. I'd always assumed it was a dummy grenade, but with my father you never knew.